SCOPE
The mixing of very viscous fluids is qualitatively and Johnson (1967). The choice of a mixer configuration is
quantitatively quite different from the process of blending governed by three characteristic parameters: mixing time,
low viscosity fluids. Parker (1964) noted that the helical power consumption, and mixer efficiency. The efficiency
ribbon agitator (HRA) is particularly well suited for mix- of a mixer is related to the total energy required to achieve
ing viscous liquids where the mixer flow is laminar. This a given degree of homogeneity. Mixing efficiency has been
observation is supported by the data of Gray (1963) and virtually ignored by previous workers, undoubtedly due
to the impossibility of finding a usable definition of the
Correspondence concerning this paper should he addressed to Pierre (thermodynamically) perfect mixing process. This diffi-
Carreau. C. Y. Yap is with the University of Mnlaysi,?. culty can be avoided by defining an efficiency relative to
Part I of this paper was published in Carl. I. Chcm. Eng., 54, 135
(1976). an arbitrary, standard mixer. This work proposes a stan-
dard mixer. This work proposes a standard mixer, and the
62 The American Institute of Chem-
0001-1541-79-2552-0508-$01.05. relative efficiency (eff),,, has been used to evaluate five
ical Engineers, 1979. HRAs of different geometries.
Mixing is a process that is basic to many industries cosity fluids. The pertinent geometry of this type of
and has been the subject of much investigation. Holland agitator is shown in Figure 1.
and Chapman ( 1966), Oldshue ( 1966), Rushton (1954), As shown by many authors (Coyle et al., 1970; Gray,
and Voncken ( 1965) have each compiled comprehensive 1963; Hoogendoorii and Den Hartog, 1967; h4oo-Young
reviews of fluid mixing, and Bourne (1964) has reviewed et al., 1972; Nagata et al., 1957, 1971), the time necessary
the mixing of powders, pastes, and non-Newtonian fluids. to achieve a certain degree of homogeneity (mixing time)
With the exception of Bournes review, most of the pub- in viscous fluids is much shorter with a helical ribbon
lications that have appeared are concerned with the mix- impeller than with a turbine (most commonly used)
ing of Newtonian fluids and have primarily discussed or with other impellers. The helical ribbon agitator and
turbulent mixing. This is not surprising, since turbulent the helical screw draught tube system (Chavan and
mixing is a much quicker process than mixing done in Ulbrecht, 19734) are probably the most efficient mixers
the laminar regime. Nonetheless, there are situations in the laminar regime. The inclined surface of the ribbon
where mixing is restricted to the laminar regime. Ex- moving near the vessel wall produces axial movement of
amples of this situation include cases where the fluid the liquid as well as tangential flow (Gray, 1963). Thus,
has a very high viscosity, such as is possessed by polymer a relatively effective top to bottom flow motion is ob-
solutions or melts, or where one or more of the mixture tained, compared with other impeller types.
components is shear sensitive. These cases are character- Although the power requirement of the helical ribbon
ized by a low Reynolds number diiring mixing, where mixer is much higher than that of turbines or propellers
mixing proceeds through fluid deformation and not by at the same Reynolds number (Gray, 1963; Hoogendoorn
turbulent eddy diffusion. and Den Hartog, 1967; Johnson, 1967), the energy re-
Parker (1964) in an article on modern practice on quired to obtain a given degree of homogeneity is con-
mixing, reported the recent introduction of the helical siderably less. Gray (1963) compared mixing and power
ribbon agitator which was effective in overcominq the data for various impellers and concluded that the helical
large viscous forces present in the mixing of high vis- ribbon agitator mixes the most rapidly and requires the
1
the mixing times obtained cannot be taken as absolute
values. They are useful primarily as relative values, de-
fined for a particular system and experimental technique.
Relative Mixing Efficiency
d The mixing efficiency is an important parameter of an
agitation system. Of course, the decisive factor in the
evaluation of the efficiency of a mixer is the degree of
homogeneity obtained after a certain time. The mixing
efficiency of a particular mixer is relatively high when
a minimal power and a short mixing time are required
to achieve a specified degree of mixing. In some instances,
the mixing efficiency can be extremely low, for example,
when whirling and fluid motion are produced only
locally without contributing in any way to the mixing
within the main body of the fluid.
Since it is impossible to define a perfect mixer, a rela-
tive mixing efhciency is deSned with respect to the
performance of an arbitrary, hypothetical mixer.
In a mixing vessel, the power consumption for laminar
flow is given by
SP P = C,pN2d3 (1)
:ig. 1. Sketch of helical ribbon agitator system. and the mixing time t, for helical ribbon agitators is
inversely proportional to the rotational speed N of the
least energy. This was confirmed by Johnson (1967) impeller (Coyle et al., 1970; Chavan and Ulbrecht, 1973;
who also showed that the helical ribbon mixers have a Gray, 1963, Hoogendoorn and Den Hartog, 1967; John-
definite advantage for very viscous fluids. His data, ob- son, 1967; Moo-Young et al., 1972; Nagata et al., 1957) :
tained with corn syrup of 2 500 centipoises, indicated "
that at the same mixing effectiveness (mixing time of 5
min), the power required for the helical ribbon agitator
was one surth to one twelfth of the power required for
turbines and propellers. Therefore, the energy input in the vessel is
The mixing time requirement has been determined for
a number of helical ribbon agitator geometries (Carreau
et al., 1976), and this presentation is restricted to the We define a hypothetical reference mixer by arbitrarily
development of a model to predict the power consumption choosing the product CICz equal to 1000. This value is
of helical ribbon agitators mixing Kewtonian fluids. The chosen from literature data as the lower estimated limit
model has been tested using values reported in the of the product of the power consumption and mixing time.
literature in addition to data measured by us. A short The efficiency of a given system when compared to
discussion on the relative efficiencies of different helical our reference mixer is the relative efficiency defined by
ribbon agitators concludes the presentation.
THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS
where the product Pt,, is the actual energy required to
Although we are primarily concerned with the predic- obtain a given degree of mixing.
tion of power consumption, the test of a mixer's utility
is its efficiency; that is, how much energy must be ex- Development of o Power Consumption Model
pended to obtain a specified degree of homogeneity. The model is based on the principle that the torque
Thus, we digress temporarily to consider mixing time exerted on a rotating impeller is due to the drag force
and relative mixing efficiency. exerted by the fluid flow around the impeller blade. This
is in contrast to the models proposed by Bourne and
Mixing Time Butler (1965) and Chavan and Ulbrecht ( 1973b), where
The mixing time t, is usually defined as the time re- it is assumed that the power consumed is that resulting
quired to reach a specified level of uniformity in a from a Couette flow, that is, flow between two coaxial
mixing system. It is a quantitative measurement of the cylinders,
time necessary to reduce the intensity of segregation The observed flow patterns that form the basis of
(Danckwerts, 1953; Lacey, 1954) to a speciiied value the model are illustrated in Figure 2. The horizontal
which is usually taken in the order of 0.1 to 1%. motion of the fluid is qualitatively illustrated in F'g tires
11
For nonturbulent mixing, however, the intensity of 2a and 20 for fixed coordinates and relatively to the
segregation is difficult to measure because of the dif- blades, respectively. The blade velocity is much larger
ficulties involved in sampling. Thus, various other criteria than the fluid velocity.
for mixing time have been developed. The methods for The forces exerted by tlie fluid on the blade at a given
measuring mixing time include electrical conductivity point are caused by the dynamic pressure of the stream
changes, refractive index differences, color differences, veIocity whose action is normal to the blade (the resulting
indcator changes during an ionic reaction, and tempera- force is generally defined as normal drag or form drag)
drag results from skin friction on the backside of the TEMPERATURE DIGITAL FREQUENCY
METER
inclined blades. CONTROLLER
TORQUE TRANSDUCER
The expressions for the drag coefficient are obtained TORQUE RECORDER
from Whitaker (1968) :
For normal flow
In both cases, the Reynolds number around the blades Fig. 3. Experiment01 opporotus.
TABLE
2.FLUIDS
PROPERTIES and impeller IV has a smaller outside diameter. Impeller V
is a single-blade agitator with all dimensions identical to
P a impeller I. Geometry F with impeller VI in the 0.248 m
Fluid ( kg/m3 1 ( N s/m2) vessel is a scaled-up version of geometry A. Geometry G
also uses the 0.248 m vessel, but the agitator has a slightly
100% glycerol 1 254 0.568 larger diameter and a smaller blade width compared to com-
100% glycerol 1254 0.708 bination F. Geometry H is the combination of impeller VI
100% glycerol 1259 0.800 with the larger vessel of 0.291 m diameter.
Silicone oil 1100 0.137 ;A tabulation of the fluids used is given in Table 2.
Vitrea oil 869 0.193
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
0.203 m, and the second was 0.248 m internal diameter and The five indexes of Equation (18) were determined
0.305 m high. The largest vessel of 0.291 m internal diameter
had a height of 0.38m. Ly a multiple linear regression of the experimental data
The agitator was driven by a reversible, variable speed of the tangential velocity profiles (see Carreau et al.,
motor coupled to the agitator through a right-angle speed 1970) to give
reducer to give minimum and maximum agitator speeds of
Nr- - 1
0 and 500 rev/min, respectively. The rotational speed was -
[ IcL(;( ( ; 4)
detected by a magnetic transducer, and the torque acting N
on the agitator was measured by a shaft mounted dynamic d2Np 14 10.6 10.176
torquemeter. The reader is referred to Yap (1976) for a
detailed description of the apparatus and methods, (19)
Eight helical ribbon ag'tators constructed from stainless and the fit is shown in Figure 4. The correlation coef-
steel were used in this study. They were made by rigidly fixing
one or two stainless steel helices (the blades, see Figure 1)
t o the shaft. In the case of the twin-blade agitators, the
helices were mounted 180 deg apart. The details of the im-
pellers' geometries are given in Table 1. Geometries A to E
are the combinations of impellers I to V, respectively, with
1
the same 0.145 m vessel. Impeller 11 has a larger pitch com-
pared to impeller I, while impeller I11 is wider in blade width
3 , 1 . , , , , GEOMETRY
NP 10' -
A A GLYCEROL 0 5 6 8 N 5 m-'
2
0
D
A
B
c
D
'8
"
''
' I
.
E
~
! F
H
"
"
'I
0,
M,N,
05
-20 ,
101 I I I I , I 1 1 1 1 I I ' I I I I I I I I I l i l l l
d2: )O.M ; (-
[5.8 (Reb)0.Z6 sin t,b
(- )ll>Jl fi)1.23]
(20)
This equation can be simplified on the following grounds:
1. For commonly used helical ribbon agitators, w / d N
0.1, and t,b N 15 deg. Therefore, we set (w/d)OJ6 N
0.69,sin $ 1:0.258, and cos t,b N 0.965.
2. Within the range of the experimental conditions,
Reb0,26varies from 1.32 to 2.17. Hence, we take Reb0.2s
N 1.82 as an average value.
Equation (20) then reduces to
Np = 24 nb [ ( d2Np
-)0.93 (3""
(T ) ] d 1.23 -1
(Effi-
Impeller nb D/d l/d w/d C2* ciency),,]
SCOPE
The mixing of very viscous fluids can be efficiently ac- experimental results of various HRAs mixing pseudo-
complished with a helical ribbon agitator (HRA). A model plastic and viscoelastic fluids. Six different mixer geome-
to predict the power consumption of the HRA mixing tries with three different fluids were examined. The fluids
Newtonian fluids has been reported by Patterson et al.
varied from negligible elasticity (2% aqueous Natrosol)
(1979); however, very viscous fluids are often non-New-
tonian or viscoelastic in nature. This paper reports the to high elasticity (lvoaqueous Separan). The model pre-
viously derived has been generalized to include the mixing
Correspondence concerning this paper should be addressed to Pierre
Carreau. C. Y. Yap is with the University of Malaysia. of non-Newtonian fluids. This was accomplished by de-
fining an effective rate of deformation that is functionally
0001-1541-79-2553-0516-$00.85, 0 The American Institute of Chem-
ical Engineers, 1979. dependent on the agitator geometry rotational speed and